City has estimated 90,000 trees in its urban forest

Canatara Park will see a reforestation plan after a massive spring-time ash tree cull in ‘Tarzanland,’ but it could be years before the shovel actually hits the dirt on a significant portion of the project.

City forestry staff are waiting to see how the remaining trees in the park’s Carolinian forest do after hundreds of dead and dangerous trees infested by the emerald ash borer were taken down this spring.

“What we want to do is ensure that with the reforestation plan for Canatara Park it isn’t about numbers of trees, it’s about types of trees in the forest…” said Beth Gignac, the city’s director of parks and recreation.

“That’s why we’re watching to see how the understory and other trees are responding now that we’ve given them more room to grow, so we would not want to be replanting until we understood how that understory and the other aspects of the forest are responding now that they have more room…”

She suggested it could be at least a year before any significant reforestation happens in ‘Tarzanland,’ but some minor planting may happen as early as this fall.

The city has been working for years to clean up and maintain the well-used Carolinian forest hit by emerald ash borer. This year’s budget included $61,000 for the rest of the clean-up from an initial pot of $400,000 earmarked for ash tree removal in 2012.

An estimated 90,000 trees make up the city’s “very, very strong” urban forest spread out across public and private lands, Gignac noted.

“In fact, most people don’t know this, but one of our most vibrant Carolinian forests in our area is the Carolinian forest out at Camp Saredaca,” she said.

Forestry staff are interested in eventually mapping out all the city trees using geographic information system (GIS) technology, Gignac noted.

Some municipalities have used GIS-equipped devices to not only count all their trees but to record their ownership, age and health, she noted.

“We’re interested in going down that road (using GIS), but there are quite a few things we need to have on the technology side to actually do that,” Gignac said.